A day in my life. Thoughts on leadership, management, startups, technology, software, concurrent development, etc... Basically the stuff I think about from 10am to 6pm.

11/12/2005

Company Leadership: What is Google Really?

As I’ve been researching grid technologies it came to my attention that Google uses grid technology to provide the really fast search response I’ve grown accustomed to. (See the paper: “Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall (Draft)”). This got me thinking a lot about Google. It occurred to me that Google’s use of grid technology isn’t the most interesting thing about them.

I use Google all day long. Many people do. The information we provide to Google by our search criteria, the times we search, the locations we search from, and what we write about; tell Google a lot about us and what is important to us. That is the power of Google. They know us. And everyday we help them know us better. I would love to have a look at the data they collect; the Internet use patterns, the social trends, the technologies trends, the MARKET trends! Have you been wondering why Google is pursuing some of the new markets? I have. I suspect that they have a well thought out plan based on an analysis of their collected market data. The question isn’t whether the data is accurate but whether the analysis is. Chances are good that it is but in life there are few guarantees.

Google makes a big chunk of money on the ability to understand the needs of its users. This is interesting because Google is a very technical company and few technical companies are good at the people thing. There is a lot to like and respect about Google and I wish them the best. I’ll dutifully continue to tell them about myself as long as they dutifully continue to take care of me.